Trincheras - History Lab https://historylab.es Fri, 20 May 2022 07:46:13 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://historylab.es/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/cropped-icono-historylab-32x32.jpg Trincheras - History Lab https://historylab.es 32 32 Bastioned fortifications of Alicante, 1708-1709 https://historylab.es/bastioned-fortifications-of-alicante-1708-1709/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=bastioned-fortifications-of-alicante-1708-1709 Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:32:25 +0000 https://historylab.es/2022/02/19/fortificaciones-abaluartadas-de-alicante-1708-1709/ Plan of Alicante between 1708 and 1709 showing the work carried out to fortify its bastions during the War of the Spanish Succession

The post Bastioned fortifications of Alicante, 1708-1709 first appeared on History Lab.

]]> During the War of the Spanish Succession, the allied troops carried out important fortification work in Alicante. By applying a bastioned line, they modified the line of defence of Alicante compared to the previous ones of Charles V, which resulted in a too static defence against an attack of a certain size, as the French troops demonstrated when they assaulted the city from the inside without great difficulty. The defences had been designed with a great deal of effort, and rather than a compact bastioned belt, it ended up as a thin wall with no interior ramparts.
One of the first French objectives was to build a new defensive layout that was more in line with the new military tactics of the time. The works, although they were never completed, were aimed at improving the previous irregular layout and dealing with its poor construction, giving Alicante’s fortifications a new defensive appearance. In the documents found, the most immediate repairs after taking the city are listed, including the repair of the walls and bastions, raising the parapets and making them 18 feet thick, once again pointing out the weakness of the previous constructions.
Outside the 16th-century enclosure, a seven-foot-high earthen trench with a bench was proposed to repel any possible landings, which, if the situation overtook them, would be helped by raising the height of the walls to the same level as the bastions and thus prevent the English from finding weak points, as they did when they managed to take the city.

The post Bastioned fortifications of Alicante, 1708-1709 first appeared on History Lab.

]]> View of the Strait of Gibraltar https://historylab.es/view-of-the-strait-of-gibraltar/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=view-of-the-strait-of-gibraltar Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:30:03 +0000 https://historylab.es/2022/02/19/vista-del-estrecho-de-gibraltar/ The image shows a view of the Strait of Gibraltar and its surroundings, with the trenches established during the 1704 siege

The post View of the Strait of Gibraltar first appeared on History Lab.

]]> After the death without descendants of Charles II, the last representative of the House of Habsburg, the War of Succession (1701-1714) for the Spanish Crown began, pitting Austracists, supporters of Archduke Charles of Austria, against Bourbons, supporters of Philip V, grandson of King Louis XIV of France. During the conflict, in 1704, Gibraltar was besieged by an Anglo-Dutch squadron in support of Archduke Charles. The interest in Gibraltar was due to its strategic location as a communications junction between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. At the end of the war, after the victory of the House of Bourbon and the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, Gibraltar was ceded to Britain, thus becoming the property of the British Crown in perpetuity in territory under Spanish jurisdiction

The post View of the Strait of Gibraltar first appeared on History Lab.

]]>